Bridget Andrews
If it wasn't for Bridget, the Barnes One World Link, which has been going strong sine 1982, would never have been founded. But in her early life, Bridget, never saw any poverty, or at least did not take it in. Her father was the squire of a small, conventional village in Wiltshire, where "the whole village and farm had belonged to my family for generations". As she remembers it, "everyone had their place in the village, and I accepted unquestioningly my Conservative background".
After a stay in Canada during the war, Bridget went to boarding school, finishing school, and secretarial college. She also took a course in French Civilisation at the Sorbonne, and spent a year working in the U.S.A. and Mexico City. Her six month stay in Mexico "opened my eyes to another way of life. It made me want to help in some way, though I wasn't sure how." Nevertheless, it planted the first seed of her later interest in the people of the developing world.
Back in England, following her father's example (he had been a Conservative MP for a while), she worked for the Conservative minister Julian Amery for five years. In her spare time, she skied, climbed mountains, and had a busy social life. In 1961 she married a solicitor, and settled into a large house in Barnes.
After becoming a mother, Bridget began to change. "I started to think more about the bigger questions of life, and how the very poor of the world managed to feed their children and live with hunger and insecurity." While doing voluntary work for Oxfam, she was struck by the problems encountered by a group of students who had participated in an experiment living off the goodwill of others. Finally, a trip to India in 1981 brought home the reality of the poverty, together with the dignity and spirituality of the people, even more clearly.
On her return to Barnes, Bridget heard a talk on Woman's Hour about twinning with the developing world. Soon after that, she met someone who supported a village headman in Kerala, South India, "and I decided, with friends, to start a similar link with his village." The idea was to be in touch with people on a personal level, as well as supporting development projects. Over the years, the Link's projects have changed more than once, but the group has still not forgotten the original principles on which it was founded.
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